


Cold Comfort

by Mercurie



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bleak, F/M, Post-Thor: The Dark World, Uneasy Allies, Wordcount: 100-1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-02
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-06-05 23:59:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6728551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mercurie/pseuds/Mercurie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malekith wins, the worlds are plunged into darkness, and Jane Foster has no allies left except Loki.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold Comfort

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Artemis_Day](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis_Day/gifts).



> Christmas 2015

"How much longer?"

Snow burned Jane's hands. Here in Jotunheim, the snow had never been water; the heat of her skin, she thought, was changing its form for the first time in all the ages it had lain. The thing she was building must be just as strange to it. Somehow she doubted frost giants went in for snowmen. 

"Tomorrow," Loki said.

"Well, it's about time." She shivered, shoving her chilled fingers under her armpits. The snowman, missing arms, eyes, nose, and mouth, was a few too many degrees off normal to be comforting. 

The corner of Loki's lips twitched, though no emotion touched his eyes. His voice was stone. "Such impatience. Anyone would think you wanted the Aether back." 

"I want the sun back." It must be months since she'd seen light that carried any warmth. When Malekith had used the Aether to cast the Nine Realms into darkness, world after reeling world had fallen to his Dark Elves – all, in fact, except for Jotunheim, a realm already perfectly at home in eternal night. Loki had spirited them away here to the last remaining stronghold, secreted from all the universe. "I'm sick of hiding. Malekith needs to go down."

Loki passed his hand over the snowman's blank face. The lumpy surface rippled under his palm, reforming into finely cut features etched so deep into her memory that she saw them behind her closed eyelids when she blinked. A dead man stared at her out of the snow, the open, honest face smiling, the beard so detailed it looked as if it ought to be soft to the touch. The hero who had failed to save them.

"I couldn't agree more," Thor's brother said. "How heartening that we're of one mind these days."

Tomorrow he was going to wrest the Aether from Malekith's control and put it back into its host: back into her. And then? She'd learned enough about Loki to be certain that he wouldn't just drop her off back home on Earth, not with all that power running through her veins. And then? And then? What would the Aether make of her this time? What would Loki make of her? She had no idea; she found it hard to care, to see beyond the immediate. Thor's smile in the snow stayed frozen, forever still and cold. _Malekith needs to go down._

Slowly, deliberately, she took Loki's hand and threaded her fingers through his. Emotion thawed his face at last: a dawn of surprise, a bright interest fixed on her like light focused by a glass. Not the hero, but the lesser evil. But in a dark world, even a wan star could be more precious than the sun.


End file.
